


Burned but not Buried

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: M/M, background mask maker trio, canon typical fire related violence, huey is a deeply repressed human being and probably touch starved pt. 3, lowkey unresolved mutual pining, referenced character death, spoilers - 1710
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 03:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: Absences speak the loudest, and it is in the stillness that Huey finds he misses the noise.Huey writes and reminisces. For the prompt "in awe, the first time you realised it" taken rather liberally.





	Burned but not Buried

[ _Dear Elmer,_

 _I will not waste time asking whether you are well. The earth is still spinning, so I will assume that you are happy as ever._ ]

Huey tries to trace the feeling back to where it starts.

He tries to count the stitches to their beginning, but they are thoughtlessly sewn. Through his picking the threads come loose and tangle until the first loop knots with the latest and he cannot discern between them. Perhaps there is no first stitch; there is no singular memory, no surge of comprehension, no flash of light. It happens nowhere, and everywhere at once. It happens here, and here, and here, and there.

It happens like this.

One year in spring, Professor Paramedes disappears for several consecutive days. They never do find out why, though this is a less due to secrecy and more due to a lack of concern: she is unreliable at the best of times, stumbling around the classroom like she has forgotten not only her lecture, the fundamentals of alchemy, and the names of half the class, but how to walk in a steady line, too. A few of the boys suggest that she might be ill — only so that they can discuss their desire to nurse her back to health — but most of the students shrug the situation off entirely and take their newfound time off for what it is, spending their absent morning lessons by the seaside or in bed, savouring a few extra hours of rest.

Huey, rarely falling into the category of most students, spends his time savouring the quiet of the Third Library in their absence.

“You should be a little nicer next time.”

Elmer chooses to stay behind with him, for — well, he assumes, for the same reason Elmer does anything. No reason at all, or the most absurd ones. He is smiling at him from across the table, a thin sort of smile that does not reach his eyebrows, and creasing the corner of a page in the open journal laid before him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Huey, narrowing his eyes enough that Elmer ceases his poor treatment of the journal and throws his hands up behind his head.

“What you said to Monica,” he explains. “I’m not going to say you should’ve agreed to go with her. If you really didn’t want to, that would’ve made you frown, too! But maybe you could be a bit nicer when you’re rejecting her —”

“Rejecting her?”

Huey stops what he’s doing, setting a flask down with a forceful thud.

“The only thing I _rejected_ was the offer of lunch,” he responds with a sigh, brow furrowing. “If she takes that personally, that’s hardly my —”

Elmer’s laughter overtakes him. “Are you being insensitive right now or just clueless?”

Huey looks abashed for a beat, drawing back in his seat and glaring, muttering, “Neither.”

— Then he straightens and looks over his work so far with an increasingly neutral expression.

“That vial — the king’s yellow,” he says, and gives a nod in its direction. “Pass me it.”

Elmer does. “Promise you’re not going to set the library on fire,” he jests, letting the vial dangle between his fingertips for a moment. “I don’t think that’ll make _anyone_ happy.”

Huey groans, and leans across the table to grab it himself. The second he does, Elmer jerks his arm away, knocking an inkwell over with his elbow in the process. Neither of them notice at first, but once Huey registers the black spilled across his journal, soaking through layers of pages — weeks of research— his hand is on Elmer’s wrist in a vice grip.

“Would it kill you to…” He pauses; the angry tremor of his hand pauses, too, and he realises that Elmer has went very still. There is nothing to it beyond that — his lips are still raised in a smile, he is unflinching and soundless — but he is still, like a statue, like all of that irksome energy has leaked out of him in pools. Huey is not sure he sees him _breathe_ in that moment, so he opens his mouth and says quietly, “Elmer?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you —”

“Sorry, I just figured you’d want me to hold still. You’re going to hit me, right?” — the corners of his mouth twitch, reinforcing his smile — “I don’t mind, so don’t worry about that! If it’ll make you happier, it’s —”

His throat goes dry. Elmer must notice the difference in his face, or the way his grip loses its force as though he has been declawed, because one of his eyebrows quirks when he looks at him.

“I was _not_ going to hit you,” he says, barely above a whisper.

“Like I said, I don’t mind.”

“I don’t care if you mind,” Huey presses, ignoring that he _does_ care, that Elmer _does_ mind, that he felt the difference in him the second he touched him, that they are both liars whether they will acknowledge it or not. “I wasn’t going to hit you,” he repeats with finality, and moves his hand away to demonstrate the point.

It is beyond him why he pushes so strongly. This world and everything in it deserves to burn — why should it matter if he _was_ going to hit him? It’s not as though Huey considers himself a pacifist; the only thing that stops him short of physical violence in most circumstances is the knowledge that his opponent — _most_ opponents — outmatch him in brute strength.

Yet here he is denying that he would strike someone willing — someone who wrongs him — for no reason other than the fact of that someone being Elmer. Elmer, who is by all definitions an annoyance, a nuisance, a clumsy idiot who had just moments before ruined hundreds of hours of hard work. Why should it matter? Why should _he_ matter? Huey cannot say.

But he keeps himself at his side of the table for the rest of the day, keeps himself at a distance for the next few; he is wary of so much as brushing shoulders with him in the weeks that follow, as though something in him fears that stillness, that reaction. As though something in him fears that he has set a precedent, and that his touches will forever be read as a warning. This shouldn’t bother him — if he could send the message to the rest of the world that he is something to be warned off, he would leap to it — but it does. These are the facts he must make sense of.

Some time later, they take a walk in the town, the two of them, and Elmer throws his arm around his shoulder. It is idle and meaningless, but it is unrestrained, and Huey feels a weight drop from his chest. He does not quite know why at the time.

It is difficult to look at one thread and see a tapestry.

[ _As for myself, you would be disappointed to hear that I cannot join you in smiling today. My most recent venture revealed itself to be another dead end. Less alchemy than spirituality. Less alchemy, if you would believe it, than even Professor Paramades’ absurd teachings. Now, I am not wholly averse to the idea of incantations, offerings and so on, but I become dubious of the process when one’s equations begin to sound like empty prayer. I told them as much — that if I thought kneeling at an altar and repeating words alone would be enough to bring someone back to life I would not have come so far for it. Even Lotto Valentino can provide that._

 _To you I will admit, I have even tried it, only briefly. Whether or not someone is listening, they do not listen to me. But then, who can blame them for that?_ ]

It happens like this.

Elmer brings him to the church, not for praying.

He brings him to the church because it is on the outskirts of town, because it is empty more often than it is full, because it is the last place anyone would look for two heretics and therefore the best place for them.

“You don’t have to dance around the subject.” Huey lays back on a pew with a book covering his face, flipping through the pages even as he speaks. His voice is nonchalant, unnaturally so. Even to himself, it hardly sounds like his at all. “Here, allow me to answer the questions you’re pretending you’re not going to ask. Yes, I missed the lesson on purpose. No, I’m not going to be back anytime soon.”

“Come on, Huey —”

“And no, I am not going to tell you _why_ ,” he adds sharply. Even through three hundred pages and a leather-bound cover he can feel Elmer’s eyes on him.

“Aw, really? Not even a hint?”

“Knowing you, you’ll pry your way to the heart of it on your own, hint or no hint.” He sighs and shuts his eyes, laying the book down on his chest. “Why would I give you a head start to meddling with my life?”

“What makes you think I’ll meddle?”

“Because it’s what you do,” Huey answers immediately. He pauses, rubbing his temple, and when he continues he sounds more resigned: “Because you _think_ it will make me happy.”

“Won’t it?”

“No.”

“You don’t _know_ that, though. Maybe my meddling will make you happier than you’ve ever imagined! Wouldn’t that be great?” Huey can _hear_ the grin imprinted onto his words, so simple and thoughtless that he almost envies it. He lays the back of his hand flat against his forehead and frowns.

“Let me ask you this,” he says, somewhere between dry amusement and irritation. “No, it’s more of a thought experiment. Imagine that I’m honest with you —”

“That’d be a great start! You should try it sometime!”

“Imagine that I’m honest with you,” Huey repeats, ignoring him. “I tell you what the problem is and you set out to fix it. Imagine, Elmer, that by some miracle all of your meddling really does lead you to a solution.”

“Actually, that’s what I’ve been imagining the whole time,” Elmer laughs.

“Good, then.” Huey props himself up on his elbows, glancing to where Elmer sits behind him. Over the back of the bench he can just make out his squinting eyes. “Now imagine that in that final stage of your scheme, right before you reach the answer to my problem, it comes to your attention that the key to my smile will cause someone else to lose _theirs_.”

Elmer stares back at him. Lowering his head, he turns his eyes back to the ceiling and studies the arches with an idle gaze.

“Which do you choose? My smile or theirs?”

“See, that’s a tough one. It’d be easy if you were asking _‘would you make me happy even if it’d make a hundred people sad?’_ , or something like that — because, you know, I’d have to go with the one hundred. I couldn’t sacrifice that many smiles for one. But a smile for a smile, that’s —”

“It’s not supposed to be easy,” Huey mutters, monotone.

Elmer is quiet for a minute. He can picture the expression on his face: the way his eyebrows draw together and his face scrunches up in concentration without ever losing that constant grin.

“I guess I’d choose theirs.”

Then it is Huey’s turn to be quiet. It’s the answer he had most expected and least wanted; the swell of righteous pride in his mind does not do enough to distract from the hollow pang in his gut. He lets out a short laugh, mostly through his nose, and hopes that he looks more unaffected than he feels.

“What makes you say that?” he asks, not wanting to hear an answer. Wanting only to leave this conversation with the upper-hand. “Aren’t all smiles the same to you?”

“Yep! They are. That’s not what it’s about.” Elmer answers anyway. “I wouldn’t choose their smile because their happiness is more important to me. I mean, I don’t know who the other person is in this situation, but I kinda doubt they’d be someone closer to me than you are.”

At Huey’s silence, he continues: “We’re friends, right? Even you can’t deny that anymore. To be honest, Huey, you might be my best friend in the whole world.”

“And that’s why you’d trade my chance at happiness for a stranger’s?” asks Huey, his voice low in his throat.

“Yeah, that’s why,” he agrees, serious where Huey is sardonic. “Because I know that you’re my best friend.”

When he turns his head he finds Elmer leaned over the pew, chin in his hand and elbow against the wood. With the light cascading through the cracked glass of the windows, daylight pouring down on him, Huey thinks that perhaps it is an understandable mistake that so many have ascribed to him divine graces. This must be why they choose buildings like this to foster their faith in miracles; he is an entirely different creature until the shadows shift, no more impish and strange, looming over him like a truth he cannot put words to telling.

“And that means I know that you’d be able to forgive me.”

Seeing Elmer like this, he almost tells him. He almost tells him — everything. Monica, and the play, and the betrayal, but not only that; before that — she, and him, and them, the three of them, and the loneliness and the lack of it, the way they fought it off without asking him if they _should_ , and its return now, with the yearning for an easier loneliness he can no more find because their company has made solitude aching. He almost tells him that he’s right, that he would forgive him, but that what he wants most is to not have need for forgiveness. What he wants most is to believe that by some improbable stroke of fortune a person he values too well to lose might value him the same.

He almost tells him that he needs to be able to believe in him, in them. That he almost _does_. That he thinks he _can_.

Then he sits up and Elmer shifts back in his seat, and he sees his grin crack devilish.

“Anyway, that choice doesn’t matter,” he says, shrugging. “Because I’d never throw one smile away for another. I’d just have to find a better solution!”

Huey arches an eyebrow, smirking very thinly, with less joy than with which he frowns.

“Aw, don’t give me that look.”

“What look?”

“That one that says _‘you can believe whatever naive drivel you want about the world, but I know better‘_ ,” he explains, dropping his smile for a second to imitate Huey’s expression.

“Your impression of me is certainly improving.”

“Thanks!” Elmer comes back beaming. He waves a hand up in gesture. “Anyway, I know what I’m talking about this time, I do! If the solution you’re counting on leaves you without any good choices, it’s time to find another one — and there are always other ones. Always! Sometimes you just have to take the creative approach. Take me, for instance.”

“I’ll pass,” mutters Huey, opening his book again.

“When the church brought me in, for a while I figured I only had two choices. I could get kicked out —”

“The likely option.”

“Wind up begging for… hey, wait, maybe I could’ve been one of those street performers! I could’ve juggled —”

“You know how to juggle?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “Nevermind. Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Right, sorry. What I mean is, I figured it was either get kicked out and beg on the streets or stay with the nuns and become, I dunno, a priest,” — Huey snorts — “Not that I’m saying either of those are bad. I’m sure there are a lot of beggars and priests who are perfectly happy! Well, maybe more the latter.”

His eyes are on the pages of the book again, but he does not shut Elmer’s voice out entirely.

“But neither one seemed right to me. Neither was gonna help me make the rest of the world happy.” He lets out a laugh. “So instead I became an alchemist! That wasn’t one of the solutions they have me, but I went out and found it for myself.

“And if I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t be here,” he says. Huey hears the dull thud of Elmer’s shoe hitting the pew, and looks up to see his expression warm, almost sincere. “— waiting for you to smile.”

“As though that's a privilege.”

“It is! Well, the waiting isn’t all that fun, but it’s always worth it.”

“Even if I were a smile junkie like you, I can’t imagine that _my_ smiles would be worthwhile. I don’t exactly show you many.”

Elmer laughs. “Maybe not, but it’s not about _how many_. You could show me a thousand halfhearted smiles and it wouldn’t be worth _one_ of your real smiles. Trust me! Have you ever even seen one of your real smiles? They’re the best. Definitely make up for all your frowning.”

Huey turns the page, sighs, and shifts the book to conceal the reluctant curve of his lips.

“If you say so.”

[ _In a sense, I am relieved. I would prefer it if the solution were something I can set into motion when and where I choose. I will do anything I must to see her again, of course, but still I would prefer — I am beginning to realise, Elmer, my friend, when I bring her back I would prefer that you were there. If I bring her back without you, if I find her without you_ ]

It happens like this.

They race down to the beach in bare feet and rolled up pant legs and hiked up skirts, and Huey follows behind them at a leisurely pace, the sound of their laughter reaching him on the breeze and filling his chest to bursting with warmth. For the first time he realizes that happiness is a test of balance; lean too much towards it and he topples, lean too much away and he topples, but if he finds the centre of gravity —

No, he has already _found_ the centre of gravity.

Elmer calls for him to hurry, and Huey laughs like he has never heard himself laugh before. It is frantic and hopeful and fearful, and he feels for a moment that he has two hearts which beat at once.

In time, one of them breaks, and the other cannot compensate.

[ _Without you, it would be no reunion._ ]

It happens like this.

Sleep runs parallel to him, ever close but never quite reaching; he feels always on the edge of it now — it looms in each moment, each corner of each thought, this pervasive, lingering exhaustion — but he is never able to fall into it. He spends much of the time now laying limp and unmoving, eyes too heavy to open, yet his mind never follows suit. His mind keeps going and going, remembering and retracing and turning back and altering the memory, telling him all the ways it might have changed if he had arrived a few minutes earlier, if he had lept in after her, if he had never let her go in the first place, if he had known, if he had _known_ —

His mind keeps him conscious but spends his energy on regret, and he is too tired to even be grieved. There are brief quiets in which he experiences something almost akin to rest, but they are only interludes leading fluid into restlessness again. By some hour of the night he gives up altogether; better to be awake than to be half-asleep. He turns onto his side and squints against the darkness.

In a vague outline, he sees Elmer hunched over his desk, surrendered to sleep. There is the faint hum of his breath, steady, inhale, exhale, inhale — _calm_. Calm, but in a way that Elmer is not when he is awake. Stillness is eerie on him, unnatural, lacking that frenzied energy that makes him. Perhaps that’s why his urge is to rouse him, because this Elmer reminds him of the Elmer who had frozen, waiting for him to hit him, reminds him of the Elmer who had stood still and silent while he kicked and screamed against him, reminds him of an Elmer who is settled in a way that unsettles him. He thinks about telling him that he does not have to stay in that chair all night, for — how many nights has it been now? Too many. It cannot be comfortable, not that he would ever complain.

He thinks about telling him that he can go home, but he cannot imagine forming the words. Huey is not an honest person, and it would not be a difficult lie to insist that he does not need him here, but Elmer seems to be in possession of a compass that points towards liars and it is _always_ pointing towards him. He would see through him in a moment. He would stay, or he would talk until they both forget that he was asked to leave — and it would be a kindness to Huey, but not to himself.

He thinks about telling him that his bed is vast and empty. He has never been enough on his own, scrawny and hollow thing; no wonder he cannot sleep — sleep must get lost on the way to him, somewhere in all that endless emptiness, that void. There was no warmth before her and there is no warmth now, no matter how close he pulls the sheets, no matter how many layers he wears. He imagines someone else to fill the space he cannot. No, not _someone_ ; he imagines Elmer. He imagines the way his arms had felt around him but gentler this time, without force, without pull, simply _there_. He imagines what a comfort that might be, to touch, to hold, to be held without thought or purpose. He imagines that he is fuller and warmer and not quite so lost with him beside him.

He thinks that he wants to tell him this, desperately. He thinks that he _needs_ to — but he cannot trust his judgement. He cannot trust this hope, and he cannot bear the hopelessness that will come if he tests Elmer as a solution and finds that he solves nothing. He would rather live inbetween the realisation and the rejection, where it is safe, where he _could_ be an answer. Where he can hold onto _that_.

In the end, he pulls himself out of bed and picks up his coat, strewn across the floor. Shrugging it on languidly, he makes his way over to the desk with dragging footsteps. After looking over him for a long moment, he shakes Elmer’s shoulder to wake him. He stirs and blinks, letting out an uncovered yawn, then smiles when he notices him.

“Oh, hey — what’s going on?” he mumbles, hazy but cheerful. “Do you want to talk?”

“No,” Huey answers immediately, then frowns to himself. “No, Elmer, we… we’ll talk in the morning. You should take my bed.”

“Hm? ‘m good here, it’s no —”

“It’s not about you,” Huey lies through his teeth, expression unchanging and voice a flat crawl. “I need the desk. I have work to do, and I can hardly get it done if you’re drooling on my papers. It would be better for both of us.”

Elmer laughs sleepily and pushes the chair back, almost stumbling and catching himself with an arm around Huey’s shoulder.

“Alright, alright,” he says, closing his eyes. “Hey, Huey, are you gonna smile? Promise me you’ll be smiling?”

“Of course,” Huey murmurs, half-leading him across the room.

“I’ll know if you don’t, you know. Even in my sleep! You can’t lie to me.”

“… I know.”

It’s not long after Elmer lays down that he goes quiet again, and by then Huey has combed through his desk, collecting a few items into a satchel. He does not look back at him, not wanting to see that eerie calm, not wanting to wish he was beside him there instead of here alone, not wanting to regret the smile he cannot show him —

And he leaves.

[ _I do not know how to say it. I do not know what it is I am saying, beyond —_

 _No, it would be a lie to say that I do not know. I think of you, Elmer, often. More often than it is reasonable to._ ]

It happens like this.

He is still there, standing to the side of his bed, with Elmer sitting at the edge of it. His drowsiness has left him, his eyes only half shut, smile no longer hazy. Smile no longer present, for a spell.

“Huey,” he says, and Huey’s throat tightens.

“You should sleep.” He does not look like he needs sleep, not anymore, but it would be simpler if he could. Elmer shakes his head.

“Huey,” he says again, and this time his hand finds his sleeve. He does not pull, just runs it up along the fabric to rest at Huey’s elbow. “It’s okay,” he continues; Huey only hears it distantly, through the ringing of his name in his ears.

“I…” He feels suddenly weak-limbed, as though each day without rest has stacked, falling like bricks on his shoulders and buckling his knees. He supports himself on Elmer’s shoulder, leaning over him. “I don’t —”

“I know.” Elmer tilts his head up, smiling — smiling, Huey realises, _at_ him, _for_ him, not just smiling — and Huey takes the opportunity to slip his free hand beneath his chin, marking the course of his jawline with a feather-light touch.

“I don’t want to go,” he breathes, listing closer. There is an arm at his back to steady him, and he moves to hold Elmer’s face in both hands. With his thumb, he traces the line of his lips, and he sees his grin grow wide.

“You don’t have to,” Elmer tells him. “You _shouldn’t_ ,” he adds, “If it won’t make you happy.”

Huey drags one knee up onto the bed and laughs, short and low, self-deprecating. “I don’t know what _will_ , Elmer.”

“You don’t?” His face is close enough that Huey can feel the question against his own lips, and the chuckle that follows. “Come on, I bet there are plenty of things that could make you happy.”

Elmer’s hand has travelled upwards, combing through his hair with a slow gentleness that he does not expect him to be capable of. He rests his forehead against his, leaving his eyes to drift shut.

“Show me one,” comes his challenge, and he catches his mouth in a kiss.

He is all smiles, pressed against him, against his skin, his lips, his mouth; Huey is breathing laughter when he pulls back and it is like air but lighter, like air but infectious, filling his lungs and spilling back out weaker and emptier — a poor imitation of the way Elmer’s chimes, but enough to leave him short-winded and flushed.

The world dissolves like a shadow under light, and it doesn’t matter because he would rather leave it forgotten. Elmer is brushing his hair out of his face, dragging kisses from his mouth to his neck, and Huey decides this is all there is. The world has nothing to offer him, cold and harsh, but Elmer offers warmth and parted lips; Elmer seems to reach through his numbness, wrenching something forgotten and once cherished out of him. He runs his fingers down his nape and he shivers — Huey must be cold; it would make sense, because Elmer is a collection of things he isn’t and radiates heat like he’s made of sunbeams — and draws ever closer, laughing, kissing him, until his fingers turn to grasping, almost clawing, desperately yearning for touch. His lips or his hands, he loses track, it doesn’t _matter_ ; it’s the closeness that he needs, the way it envelops him, seals his memories and his thoughts and his grief far away. He wants to be nowhere and nothing with him.

But perhaps he pulls too forcefully, and perhaps he wants too much.

The flame starts at his hair, soft beneath Huey’s fingers as he tugs and pulls, and it coils like a snake around his neck. Huey does not notice at first, because _of course_ he is warm — _of course_ , and he lets this warmth engulf him without hesitation, without thinking, without allowing himself to think. Elmer, grinning, meets his lips with teeth. He doesn’t care that it is more frantic than gentle now. If he keeps smiling he might melt into it, might mark himself with it, might find his lips twisting the same. He tastes joy on him, bareboned as it might be, and longs for it like a starving man longs for scraps.

He breathes laughter, then laughter turns to smoke, to soot, and he shoves himself back, chest constricting. By the time he sees it, the fire is embracing Elmer more closely than he is, and Elmer is still. Elmer is smiling. He looks to his hand, ablaze but unburned, and looks at the trail it leaves of angry reds and tearing skin. _Elmer_ , he thinks he shouts. He feels himself shout, but he does not hear it. Driven by the instinct to keep him close, to keep him safe, he places his hand on his chest — and it scorches, searing through old scars and skin and boiling blood, sinew, bone. His heart beats loud in his head and Elmer's pulses under his fingers. He is shuddering violently, watching him peel apart beneath his touch, and he is just _still_ , and he —

He shouts for him, and this time his voice sounds.

The night is dark and he is alone, his hands clenched tight against his sheets, shaking. He shivers in his cold sweat and struggles to steady his rasping breath. Wanting air, simple and clear. Wanting, _wanting_. Wanting the numbness, the ease of it. Wanting not to be reminded what a weight it is to feel.

The tapestry is there for him to see but he turns his eyes away, fearful of its flammability and his inclination towards setting these things alight.

[ _I had hoped that if I put it down on paper I would know what to make of it. I will state it plainly. Last night I dreamt I lost you, and I awoke afraid, truly afraid for the first time since that day. I was… surprised. Truth be told, I was not sure I had such emotion anymore. I was not sure there were still fears left worth fearing, my worst already realised. Yet I awoke trembling, Elmer. It baffles me, but I did. I have felt nothing so overwhelming in weeks, and the echo of it has haunted me all through the day. I can only conclude —_ ]

It happens like this: Huey picks up a pen and the ink spells Elmer’s name.

It is only a revelation because he never allowed himself to look.

[ _I can only conclude that your life matters. More than my own, I would wager, and certainly more than any other left in this world. No, it is not so baffling after all. I have always known that I —_ ]

It happens like this, or it would if he let it.

He does not.

When he hears the rapping at the door, he sets his pen down, willingly distracted.

His mask sits on the edge of his desk, and his hand moves to it but stops short. He spends a few brief seconds weighing out his priorities — would it be worth it to conceal himself here, where he would not be recognised, where he would stay for only a few short days, where face-to-face diplomacy could be put to good use? In the end, he decides against it, slipping the mask into a drawer before he pushes his chair back and stands.

He pulls the door open only part of the way before he hears a low voice ask, “You’re the alchemist?”

“An alchemist,” he corrects, stepping aside to let him in. “But the one you’re looking for, I expect.”

In truth, he does not _expect_ it, not fully. He makes many deals these days, many promises, and expects only a small number to be followed through. That he had discussed the possibility of a potential buyer during his excursion the previous day had slipped his mind by the evening — but he is not _surprised_ , either, to find someone at his door referring to him by his proclaimed profession.

He does not note much about the man; there is not much he cares enough to note. The creases on his forehead and the streaks of grey in his hair tell him that he is older than him, perhaps by a couple of decades, but to Huey even this detail hardly registers. He turns his back on him straight away as though to emphasise his disinterest, returning to his desk. He finds what he is looking for after a few short seconds. When he looks to him again he is wearing a hollow smile and holding a small sphere in his hand.

“I only have a few prepared,” he says, half-tossing it into the man’s extended hands. _He_ does not handle it quite so lightly, cautious as anyone might be when examining an explosive. Expression passive, Huey tilts his head. “But if you’d care to discuss —”

“No, that will be enough.”

Huey watches his brow furrow and arches an eyebrow. The man’s reason for needing such things does not concern him in the slightest — business is business, and it is easier than to counterfeit currency for every country he passes through — but his haste makes him wary.

“My payment, then?” he demands following a pause. The man nods and rifles through his coat pocket, retrieving a handful of coins, which he holds out to Huey. His smile draws thin.

“This is less than half of what they’re worth,” he remarks, counting the pieces in his palm. There is nothing of anger in his tone; he appraises the exchange as if he were more observer than participant. “Tell me, why is that?”

The man doesn’t answer.

Huey moves stiffly to take the object from his hand, but he takes a half-step back and so he exerts more force to grab his arm instead. He looks to be on the way to formulating excuses for himself, then, but Huey does not give him the time; he clenches his fingers and turns his shirt sleeve to burning.

[ _I need you. Somehow I cannot bear the thought of an existence without your incessant smile. Would it surprise you to hear that before I met you I thought I would never be able to laugh again? Now I am faced with that same thought, and I can only remind myself that as long as you live there is - a certain hope. At times I am sure that hope is the last shred of warmth in my heart._ ]

The explosive clatters to the floor when the man stumbles back, swearing through clenched teeth and scrambling to put out the flame.

“My apologies,” says Huey calmly, raising his hand to furl and unfurl it idly in front of his face. “I forget that these things aren’t toys. You must understand that, seeing as you seem to value them as such.”

He frowns and stoops to retrieve his invention, taking a brief assessment of the state of it; he supposes it is fortunate that it had not ignited in the flash of flame, though somehow it had not occurred to him to be concerned. Once he is satisfied that it poses no threat, he drops it into his pocket and straightens.

When he does, he finds a fist flung at his face. The punch hits square on target before he has the chance to react, and he catches himself on the side of his desk to keep from falling. Across the room, he hears the door slam shut.

By the time he has regained his composure, he is alone again, nursing a growing bruise.

[ _You make me — myself, Elmer. Knowing you, it makes me myself._ ]

He sees his reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. It is nothing he recognises.

He is in pain. He _must_ be. Blood trickles down from the corner of his mouth, where the force had caused tooth to collide with skin, but his expression does not show it. He does not _feel_ it. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and returns to his chair to sit, quiet.

[ _My dear friend, there is not so much of myself to be found these days, and I —_ ]

He looks at the letter for — he does not know how long, reading and rereading to where he left off.

He tries to organize his thoughts. He tries to find the words for what he knows. He tries to trace the feeling back to where it starts.

He tries, but he gets tangled, lost in the individual stitches.

There is Elmer, friend of the entire class — no, the entire town — choosing to sit with him in the library on a spring day, choosing to be holed up in that stuffy room with books and journals and chemicals that he might see him smile. Elmer, nuisance at best and menace at worst, instilling in him more concern than he has felt for another human being in years with a brief glimpse of vulnerability. Elmer, walking with him arm-in-arm as though he has never doubted his touch. Elmer, reteaching him laughter, reteaching him friendship. Elmer, bathed in sunbeams, soft glow rather than harsh bright, telling him that he is his friend, his best friend. Elmer, trusting his capacity for forgiveness in spite of being shown only his will to resent and begrudge and _hate_. Elmer, trusting him, _trusting him_ to be a better person than he has ever — will ever allow himself to be. Elmer, counting meeting him among all the most fortunate turns in his life.

There is Elmer, waiting for his smile when there are so many others in the world. So many kinder. So many more easily won.

There is Elmer, waiting, waiting, waiting, even when Huey is scarcely there at all. Waiting on him through the night, falling asleep at his desk only when he cannot stave it off any longer. There is Elmer, asking that he smile even when he cannot see it. There is Elmer, leaning on his shoulder in a moment of contact that still lingers as the last.

It happens here and here and here, and nowhere at all.

And there Huey is, leaving him. There Huey is, gone.

There Huey is, still thinking of him. Still writing him, letters that he never sends. Still following his advice like it is a creed: there is an answer that satisfies him, there must be, if he only searches.

There Huey is, dreaming of him. Dreaming of his touch as he knows it and as he does not. It does not always turn to terror — some nights he wakes from these dreams merely aching, merely longing — but the terror is more poignant, and harder to ignore.

The terror tells him that the second his love becomes tangible it becomes burnable. It tells him that any joy he finds in another person will turn to ash. It tells him that even if he is fond of Elmer — _because_ he is fond of Elmer — he would risk too much in acting on his desires. It tells him that if he _doesn’t_ , if he keeps this desire inside of him, if he does his best not to look at it, it will not have to be anyone’s downfall. If he keeps his distance and keeps his quiet, reflects only on this love alone, no power that exists in this world can destroy it. Even _he_ cannot destroy it, not with all the fire and gunpowder in the world.

And it cannot destroy _him_ , or whoever it is that he sees in his reflection as of late. It cannot shatter the mirror and break through the numbness; the pain cannot exist if he does not feel anything at all.

Huey strikes through his words so far and writes down one more sentence in delicate, careful lettering.

Once he is done, he tears the page out and crushes it in his hand.

In the blink of an eye it is reduced to ashes. He keeps watching until the fire dies.

[ _Dear Elmer,_

 _It is a shame that I cannot let my love of you save me._ ]

**Author's Note:**

> One could argue that this prompt does not specify “awe” in the positive sense and that portraying it instead in the sense of “dread” or “deep, unshakable fear” is Valid. 
> 
> I did want to write Happy Humer but Huey is so……………… Huey that instead turned into _Huey tries to deny having an emotion for literally years then finally acknowledges it and promptly decides to repress it_.


End file.
